May the Darkness be merciful (Black Jewels and more)

Warlord Princess! I love it!

I have kicked around ideas for OCs before, but I don't feel confident about assigning Jewels - or to a degree determining caste. I kinda wish we had some demographic information but may e someone more detail oriented than I has a better sense of relative Jewel rarity.

There's always a temptation to aim for dark Jewels but Cassidy amply demonstrates that great characters can have any Jewel strength. (ordinarily I wouldn't worry too much, but darker Jewels seem to really solidly trump lighter ones in conflict, and I wouldn't want to mess with the dynamic too much)

 

Hmm. I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp of caste/jewel stratification? Like, caste seems to be pretty evenly sprinkled-- Queens and Warlord Princes are definitely common enough to be considered standard, rather than outliers.

So if we break it down to an even 50/50 population split, Queens and WP probably make up something like 15-20% of the population, with Princes/Priestesses making up another 25-30%, and then Warlords/witches making up the final 50-60%. Healers and Black Widows seasoned to taste.

Jewel stratification is a bit weirder, because of things like Dorothea and Hekatah's campaigns to purge the world of darker jeweled witches. If we take Kaeleer as more of a baseline, it seems like Black is something of a .001% chance (with maybe one or two a generation, if that) and Ebon Grey at something like a .01% chance. Then Grey hits the the .1%, Red is the 1-3%, and everything from that is probably more evenly rounded out. Lighter than Opal is definitely more common, though I imagine there's probably something like 15-30% of the population sits between light-Opal and Red. And there's probably 10-20% of the population that sits around White or unjeweled. So that leaves something like ~50% to fiddle in that lighter range, broadly scattered.

I really like Opal as a jewel, because it sits on that dividing edge. I also really like Purple Dusk because of the name. :P

edit: Also I'd say that there's probably one, maybe two, Warlord Princes for every Queen. Even Jaenelle's court didn't have a full circle of them, so while they aren't rare, they're also not sprouting like weeds.

 

That seems pretty reasonable as a guideline, though as you say the amount of introduction we get through Terreille gives the impression that darker Jewels should be a little rarer, but I think your figures seem pretty darn solid.

I kind of think black should actually be estimated even more rarely, since in all the realms only Saetan, Daemon, Cassandra and Jaenelle wear it, and only Jaenelle has ever been born to it; Saetan and Cassandra seem to have been under the impression that Witch is always and only a witch who receives the Black when she makes her Offering to the Darkness; evidently this is rarer than once or twice a generation even in Kaeleer, since Cassandra has waited for so long to meet her successor.

But perhaps the distinction is that traditionally Witch is a Queen who receives the Black; maybe there are similarly rare Black-jeweled witches of other castes, punctuating the long wait for another Black-jeweled Queen.

Hmm. A very interesting notion. Maybe each time a rare witch is born to the Red, the Blood pay attention, trying to get a scent of her caste. Some Queens are obvious even as infants, but I suspect that some are unclear until they're older, maybe even not until they make the Offering.

It's also implied that the Offering doesn't always return a jewel three ranks darker, so all the anticipation around a Red-jeweled Queen making her offering comes to nothing when she returns with the Ebon-gray, trying so hard to not to feel like she has let down the entire Realm and oh my god I might actually write something

 

In Heir to the Darkness Surreal mentions using a witch's brew to suppress her period, and afaik there's no earth plants that can reliably do that, so hormonal manipulation seems within the plausible realm of witchcraft in the BJ verse.

In another series (the Stormlord books by Glenda Larke), there's a form of magic using water that allows you to paint a future that must come to pass. One character uses this to allow her trans son to grow up with more prominent male sexual characteristics and less visible female secondary sex characteristics. I think this sort of magic would work well with Arachnian dream weaving.

 

I think by the time Cassandra came around, Hekatah had already started sinking her claws in too, right? The timeline is a little iffier there. Definitely there was an issue of Dorothea and Hekatah actively killing darker jeweled children though, so the long drought of Black-jeweled witches seems like it might have something to do with that.

(Thought: Blood have been getting steadily darker as time goes on. Maybe the absence of large groups of darker jeweled Blood was partly because they were deepening in strength as interbreeding grew more common, and then the D&H wonder duo went ahead and started actively cultivating a reverse in that trend instead. Hm.)

Actually, now that I think about it-- it's interesting that the darkest Kaeleer jewels get is Grey I think. Is there another Ebon-Grey? I don't think there is. Which means all the darkest jewels came from Terrielle. And obviously Hell doesn't really have many births. I wonder if the degree of 'darkness' of the realm actively affects how the jeweled powers work? Kaeleer Blood seems to be able to do things past the powers of the Terrillien Blood of equal jewel ranks at times-- Phillip's Grey versus Chaosti and Karla, for instance. So maybe it's a matter of Terrillien Blood descending in order to reach an ambient degree of power that is already pretty abundant in the Twilight Realm?

HMMMMM.

 

That's an interesting thought, although it could also be that, as Saetan hints, Kaeleer embraces darker and wilder magic - it might mean that the people are simply more in touch with the potential of dark magic whereas in Terielle the study and practice of the Craft's true potential has been subtly discouraged much in the way that the Hourglass Craft has been.

Karla and Chaosti lived in a Realm where the culture around the Craft was still mostly pure (not counting Karla's uncle). They also had the benefit of practice and tutelage at SaDiablo Hall, which surely helped them maximize their potential - to say nothing of Jaenelle's influence in helping her friends discover tricks that had been long forgotten, if indeed they had ever been known (such as airwalking). Stuff that even the finest Craft tutors Saetan could find might never have known.

So yeah, I'd say that if you put Karla and Philip in a match, no matter what Realm they're in, she's going to have a distinct edge even before she calls in her Eyrien war-stick and destroys him.

 

I couldn't find my physical copy of the collected BJT, so I went ahead and bought all three books on my Nook. I did find my signed copy of Dreams Made Flesh though, which was probably the biggest and best moment of my life when I got it.

(My computer lab teacher made us type up a letter and send it to someone famous, and if we got something back we would get extra credit. I didn't think mine was going to get answered, but Anne Bishop sent back two copies of Dreams Made Flesh and like, ten signed bookmarks for the Tangle Webs promotion. Babby PR had the happiest day of his life right then.

I wonder what she though of a 14 year old gushing about the books they'd been reading for 'years' at that point. Whoops.)

 

Okay so. Considerations on castes and gender-based casting; we've already sort of picked at some of the Gender Shit that could revolve around being trans or gnc and a Queen/Warlord Prince, so I'm mostly focusing on the lower castes right now.

Warlord - witch
Prince - Priestess
*Black Widow
Warlord Prince - Queen
(Healers)

So, something interesting is that in one of the books, there's a mention that Black Widows are beholden only to WPs and Queens, even though it's not a formal caste, right? But Priestesses also have specific training, and without exception, every Priestess we see in the books either serves at an altar or ends up training as a Black Widow. So, since Black Widows can be trained, I wonder if Priestesses are like... they're a caste, but not innately so-- any witch of sufficient power and authority can train as one. Maybe there are aspects of Blood biology that mean that training can't always make the Priestess, but I'm not sure.

Also like, Black Widows have entire harems of males who specifically serve them, not any of the Queens. We've been told that the Black Widow covens are a bit removed from the rest of the Blood, and they don't always involve themselves with the politics of the Queens and such. So, okay, there's that. We have two male canonical Black Widows, one born and one made, so there's that. It's possible to be born a Black Widow, but you can train to be one and eventually have the physiological change that gives both immunity to poisons and the snake tooth. So Black Widows are probably only separated on a gender basis by virtue of tradition; there is nothing to suggest that the training itself was grueling for Saeten specifically because he was male, so.

But Saeten also held a position of power and a Black Jewel, so if you're a coven of Blood who are specifically removed from politics so you can have your own internal power structure... wouldn't it make sense to bar most of the males into service rather than grant them standing rights with the rest of you? Black Widows can be Queens, but their leaders are the High Priestesses of the Hourglass. If there's not an innate drive to serve geared towards them, it would make sense, with Blood temperments, that they would gently discourage males from properly joining their ranks and getting another degree away from 'proper' service. Saetan was already a power in his own right though, and Cassandra taught him partly out of affection, I think, and partly out of fear of who else he might go to for training if it wasn't her.

Which brings me to Healers. Because, okay, Priestess may not be innate, Black Widows can be born but also are not inherently innate, so Healers... might not also be innate. Which has much less canon support, actually; Healers are identified as such from birth for almost all of the characters with that. Instantly they are identifiable as such, when Black Widows aren't. It seems to me that Healer as a caste might actually be innate in a way that Priestesses aren't, but that makes the caste listing all screwy, so from a structure sense, it would be more reasonable to put Prince/Priestess as a mid-tier rather than Prince/Healer. Because Healers come from all ranks, right? (Though I don't think I've ever seen one ID'd as a Priestess, because Healers typically have their own training that is divergent from Priestess training.)

But like, healing craft isn't exclusive to them. We have Healers and healers, and several times it's characters like Lucivar or Saeten or Daemon being shown to have skill and training in healing above some other characters. Which makes sense, given their lifespans-- they'd have to pick that shit up-- but it does make it interesting since they can do healing craft, but I don't think any of them are shown to make healing webs.

So, okay, Healers: probably more tied to biology and birth than Black Widows, but also sharing craft in their methods. Everyone uses craft, but really only Black Widows and Healers are shown using intricate webs. That's kind of interesting, when you consider what a force Queen/Healer/Widow combinations are-- and if you think about Black Widows as masters of poisons and mind healing to the Healers with physical and especially grievous injury and disease healing. Is there a reason why they divide on those lines? Were they once part of the same caste, but something in their training diverged and eventually they grew into two different castes with distinct markers? Is there a way to train someone in healing craft the way that Black Widows can be trained? Is this also something that males could access, but are barred from by virtue of tradition and cultural blindness?

(Also, belatedly-- Black Widows get such a fundamental change to their bodies at the end of their training that I'm inclined to think that trans people pursuing surgery/hormones/etc wouldn't actually be that hard. I think that craft might have a lot more potential than it's given credit for, but I also think that a full sex change would probably require both Healer and Black Widow weaves for best result. It's viable tho.)

 

So I broke up the first time with my one and only boyfriend because he broke the spine of my first edition paperback of Daughter of the Blood. (We broke up permanently when he put his fist through my specialty built gaming tv, and I was like, yes, fucker, my belongings are chosen with care. You weren't, obviously.) I bought the first trilogy beginning in 1997-98, man. I treasure my paperbacks, I even bought them again in hard cover when they were re-released.

Whoever said you can't take material things with you in death have obviously never seen/participated in an Buddhist funeral.

Spoiler: brotherly incest

Daemon forcibly kissing Lucivar in Daughter of the Dark did bad things to teenage me.

I'll never get over that. I actually really really liked Jaenelle Angeline despite her Mary Sue status, which I think Surreal totally usurps and deserves that title waay more. Other than my severe dislike of Surreal, I really liked every character, even that annoying aristocratic brat and the bitchy spoiled Queens in Shalador's Lady. I think if I had to really choose, the character I identify with the most would be Jaenelle's sister Wilhelmina Benedict.

I wrote rambling fanfics about her for the longest time where she had fraternal male grandchildren.

Spoiler: Male Queen and Trans Warlord Prince

One was discovered to be a Queen, but not female-identifying, the other is female-identifying and is a Warlord Prince but doesn't really give a shit while her twin angsts about not being there for her/supporting her enough because despite being a Queen he does not identify in any way as being female. Male Queen is also feeling guilty for being happily married with a Witch wife and two children with a menagerie of talking animals.

Poor Wilhelmina had to deal with it all while dealing with other treacherous family members.

 

Aaa I love all of that! (And, much as I adore Surreal, I do think that she tends a little more towards Super Special Lady than Jaenelle does. Less in text justification for it kaybe. I'll accept Daemon/Surreal, but I won't like it and refused to read the final anthology for years because of it.)

I adored Wilhemina, and I wish we'd gotten to see more of her. And the coven as a whole actually-- rereading, I'm remembering how much I wanted to know about Karla and Morghann and Khary and Aaron. (I was totally convinced Aaron was a werewolf as a kid. Like 100% convinced.)

 

I just realized you haven't yet told us about your Beta Kids BJT AU yet. And I Want To Know *_* (I feel like Jade kinda must be a Black Widow)

 

CRACKS KNUCKLES

Spoiler: rambling without much connection

Okay so with the admittance that this is an AU structured like a crossover, wherein the Beta Kids end up in Kaeleer through SBURB shenanigans (and I'm going to have to restructure this down the line anyways to allow for the Alpha Kids too but) so I'm not going to be examining so much actual family life etc, if I were going to say that the kids were born n raised in Kaeleer, Dave and Rose would be Glacian and I'm inclined to say that John and Jade would be either Nharkhavan or from Dharo. If we went long-lived races, Rose and Dave would be Hayllian, while John and Jade were Eyrien (and may the darkness have mercy on the Eyrien male that tries to tell Jade she can't fight.)

OKAY ANYWAYS

I like the idea of Jade being the strongest, jewel-wise, with Green Birthright and descending to the Grey, while John and Dave both would be Opal Birthright descending to Sapphire for John and Red for Dave. Rose would be Birthright Rose descending to Purple Dusk, but a particular quirk of her Jewels lets her descend to Black under certain circumstances (hello grimdark!Rose).

John would be a Prince, I think, and Dave would be a Warlord with Black Widow heritage. Neither of them walks that knife edge of violence that Warlord Princes do (tho for the alpha kids, Dirk would def be a Warlord Prince) and I think in terms of caste John's going to be higher (Heir versus Knight, natch) though Dave's got some particular quirks wrt dead timelines that I think Black Widow heritage would be really good for explaining that.

Rose would be a Black Widow because yknow, Seer, and I'm thinking a Healer as well. I could see her pursuing the path of Priestess (depending on how you consider that caste assigned) but out of the four, she's probably the one that people underestimate the most. Jade is a Queen, because how Queens relate to the land + the blood fits a lot of how Jade interacts with being a Witch of Space and how she interacts with her friends. Not a natural-born Black Widow like Rose or Dave, but probably pursued at least some training.

John made the Offering first, despite being the youngest. Jade made it last. Rose can probably go Black when she's lost in the Twisted Kingdom, but I imagine that there would be other occasions where she can do it at well, it's just something that would take a deep toll on her. She made the Offering the first time she went Black, and confused the shit out of everyone. Dave probably made the Offering right after she did that, like a rational goddamn adult, and got teased mercilessly for it at the time.

(Alright though, now I'm thinking of shit like the Alpha kids so I might as well get into them even though I'm not as firm on my ideas here.)

Jake and Roxy both have Birthright White, Jake descending to Tiger-Eye while Roxy descends to Rose. Jane wears Birthright Summer-sky, descending to Dark Opal, while Dirk wears Birthright Tiger-eye descending to Purple Dusk. Jane is the only one who wears a dark Jewel.

Dirk would be a Warlord Prince (as stated above) but probably has a lot of rigid self-control. Jake's a Warlord and absolutely fucking charming for it, but he doesn't have to fiddle with caste shit as often. All of them would be inclined to stay out of court politics.

Jane would be a Queen/Healer, though probably lacks both Black Widow heritage and training. Definitely leaning more towards the Healing than the Queening, but she'd be the sort of Queen to unconsciously collect a court regardless. Roxy doesn't have a caste! She's a regular old witch and she likes it like that. Probably has a fair amount of Black Widow training, maybe even is a sister of the Hourglass, but she'd keep it under wraps. Roxy likes being a witch. Black Widows can be way too stuffy and ~mysterious~ about everything forever.

Long-lived, Jake would be an Eyrien born without wings while Jane would be an Eyrien, period. Roxy would be Dhemlan, while Dirk is Hayllian. From the short-lived races, Jake would be from Dharo while Jane was from Nharkava, while Dirk and Roxy both would be from Glacia. Maybe one of them from Askavi.

Jane would be the most likely to form a proper formal court, and Dirk would probably be her Steward in that event. (Dirk would also try and be the Master of the Guard and the First Escort, but nobody lets him do that because christ Dirk take a fucking break.) Despite the variety of Black Widow trained kids, Rose would be the only one openly part of the Hourglass; Dave may not have gotten training at all, beyond what he might need to keep himself from hurting himself. Jade might not ever set up a formal court, but she'd happily serve in Jane's, to the bafflement of pretty much every onlooker ever. (Jade is the Master of the Guard, and Dirk is very put out about it.)

 

And if anyone wants to help me hash out troll caste/rank, I would love you dearly because I just. Fucking love this universe so much.

(On the flipside: Jaenelle as a Muse of Heart. Witch is always a Muse, but the aspect changes depending on what is needed in a session. Witch just fucking breaks the Muse/Lord rule for classes.)

 

... goddamit, PR.

I read the first of these books when I was sixteen, and was Very Confused. Why is everything about sex?? o_o

As a grownup who is much more familiar with Dead Dove... uh. Oops. Might have to read these. I know I've got the first two kicking around the house somewhere.

I mean, if anyone follows our RP... wow yes that would be easy to au into this setting.

 

XD that is awesome PR! Thank you!

Tbh, I have never understood the HS classes enough to grok the significance of Witch being the Muse. (I still haven't gotten past the alpha kids being introduced and Jane's mailbox exploding, so it seems like there's a lot I don't know yet.

 

I dropped off sometime after the Alpha kids got into game and met up with John&co but before the Caliborn claymation shit, so my perception of the class could be gamebreaking BUT. Essentially Muse and Lord were gender locked and locked to sessions with only two players, where either would get space or time. Caliborn as Lord English breaks time across multiple sessions, while ascended alt!timeline Calliope as Muse of Space manages to break the game entirely by creating a new session free of corruption. They're gamebreaking basically, which fits Witch very well.

Given that any session with Witch would probably have more than two players, she'd break the aspect lock too I think. I'm leaning Witch of Heart or Blood for Jaenelle.

 

OKAY SO

Thoughts about Eyrien misogyny vs greater world matriarchal society vs Dea al Mon society. Because I think the best way to look at "how do Eyriens have a nominally matriarchal society but greater patriarchal societal norms" (other than 'Bishop wanted to write some misogyny to specifically subvert') is actually by looking at the other born warrior race that went the opposite direction.

Spoiler: long

Because the Dea al Mon (from what little we see) are matriarchal in name and practice; the males are fully respectful of their female counterparts, tend to encourage and enjoy female rule, and it seems like rape and rape threats are incredibly rare (male-on-female, at least; we have no data for female-on-male rates) for them. I think this is part that they're closer to kindred than human (and there's textual evidence that kindred just do not comprehend the power dynamics of rape) but I also think this is in part because of how they structure their society.

Dea al Mon have family groupings, and actively continue to visit with their dead relatives if those relatives become demon dead. Dea al Mon tend to reference those family groupings first, then court affiliation second; it feels like the territory itself (from what little information we get) tends to have little formal structure in favor of greater social consequence. It's really hard to say fuck the rules when the rules you're fucking are Granny Is Gonna Be Pissed rules, rather than Ambiguous Formal Authority rules. But because of these family groupings, Dea al Mon are raised intensely loyal and intensely vicious in defense of what's theirs; they're all, male and female, considered prime fighters and protectors. And I think it's that communal, informal family structure that makes them so able and willing to follow the matriarchal formal structure of society without any of the pressure issues that human territories seem to have.

Now Eyriens, on the other hand, don't pay heed to those family structures. Eyrien ruling is incredibly formal; they have an aristocracy, and if you aren't a member of a court, you're considered lesser. This is pretty on par with the rest of the human world, so why do their males have such a huge bent towards misogyny? Well, Luthvian said it right when she told Lucivar that he was her little boy, and then he got sent off to the hunting camps and he became just another Eyrien brute.

Unlike the Dea al Mon, who teach everyone how to fight while letting males take on protector roles for peace of mind, Eyriens only teach males how to fight. In fact, they specifically rupture those family bonds by sending their boys off to hunting camps; I'm not positive on the time scale there, but I don't think it would be incorrect to assume that young Eyrien warriors spend decades, maybe even a century, in that environment. And it's going to be a highly toxic environment too. Even though Lucivar occasionally thinks fondly on certain trainers he had, all of his memories of the hunting camps are incredibly bitter, and I don't think that's just because he was nominally a bastard. I think that those camps are liable to be cesspits of misogynistic rhetoric, and since these are Eyrien males during that period of life when they're absorbing the internal moral structure they're going to be using for the rest of their life, they accept and continue being those misogynistic douchelords when they move back into formal Eyrien society.

And this has been going on for tens of thousands of years; it's a society where all the males are taken to the side and taught how to be brutal, unfeeling bastards during the time when their empathy and emotional sensitivity is at its highest and easiest to beat out of them. When they rejoin society, they'll be serving powerful women, yes, but it's always known that while the women hold the power, they aren't strong like Eyrien males, aren't deserving like Eyrien males, and if those males hold the rest of the power, well that's just right, isn't it?

(I think part of it's also that Eyriens have much more rigid class structure for females than any other society. If you're a Healer or a Priestess, you have some respect. If you're a powerful Queen or an aristo, you have a lot of respect. If you're a female who doesn't fit any of those roles, you're a warm body for a man who wants it and nothing more; at least low-caste Eyrien males can head off and be warriors or learn a trade. Low-caste Eyrien females don't get that, unlike every other race in Blood society. It's pretty fucked up, tbh!)

 

I wish we´d known what eyrien culture of say, Andulvars time was like.
Because you see in a lot of other cultures Dorothea gets her claws in that the misandry tends to have misogynistic outgrowth, kinda similar to how real life misogyny hurts men as well. And we primarily hear about Eyrien culture from Lucivar and Luthvian, who both experienced the Dorothea influenced version.

 

Yeah, I really wonder. Prothevar's got some hints of it, and I think the hunting camps were still around back then, but Andulvar is much less toxic than most of the Eyrien males we meet. I wonder how much of the hypertoxicity is in response to the first war between realms too? Depending on who the survivors were and how they framed that war as they passed down their stories, I wonder how much creeping corruption Dorothea actually had to push into Eyrien society, and how much was already there waiting to be used.

(I do wish that we had a better grasp of ages, too. Obviously 50000 is long for like, anyone, and was only achieved by Saetan&co because they were dead or dead-adjacent. Daemon's considered in his prime at around 2000, while Dorothea is comfortably middle-aged at a couple thousand more. If the average for the short-lived races is 100-200, and middle of the line mixed-race people are thought to live a couple thousand (let's say 3000-6000), I guess it would be safe to say that long-lived races can be up to 10000 before they die of old age? But they don't seem to die of old age very often; I don't think we ever see 'old' long-lived race members, other than Dorothea post-cursing. So 10000 for old age, but likelihood of dying prior to that increases exponentially with each passing century?)

 

I mean, hyperviolent society. Murder is legal. No wonder people often die young.